LA Weekly: LEGALIZING PROSTITUTION COULD REDUCE RAPES, STDS?

What would happen if prostitution were “decriminalized.”

Rhode Island lawmakers did just that, from 1980 to 2009, inadvertently so. Responding to pressure from a group seeking to legalize prostitution, the legislature made prostitution a misdemeanor, but it also inadvertently removed language that made exchanging money for sex a crime if it took place indoors.

The mistake was rectified, but it gave UCLA public policy professor Manisha Shah and colleague Scott Cunningham of Baylor University a chance to see what happened when prostitution was pretty much legal in Rhode Island:

The duo examined rates of rape and STDs in Rhode Island from about 2003, the year a court case exposed the inadvertent legalization, to 2009, when the loophole was closed.